Assorted Thoughts From An Unsorted Mind

In which a guy old enough to know better talks about...stuff.
Including, but not necessarily limited to: Wrestling, Metal, Anime, Books, Comics, Cartoons, Stuff that pisses me off, AOR and songs with "Metal" in the title.

Sunday, 20 January 2019

Genre: Adventure. Allegedly

An all-female heist gang take on an ill-fated jewel snatch that goes wrong. Meanwhile a gang of bikers are looking for the woman that killed their ex-boss.

So while gang-leader Chase languishes in the tiniest prison ever, her BMX -riding sister is great danger

A woman with big boobs shows up from time to time to keep the viewers interested.

When I saw the cover to Asphalt Angels my inner 13-year old was suitably impressed. "Hot chick with a gun" he said, bouncing up and down "Gonna be awesome"

However, my inner movie fan was a lot more cynical. From painful experience, most movies that use boobs and guns as the big selling point rarely have put any effort into important stuff like story, characters or not sucking.

But I went ahead and watched it anyway.

I'm dumb.

Describing "Asphalt Angels" as low-budget cinema would imply there was a budget to begin with. The whole thing is shot in the hills outside LA (I think) so after a while you start asking "Do any of these people actually have homes?"

Other awkward questions include :

Why do the badass bike gang only have four members?

Why do none of them ride a bike at any point. Or even seem to own one?

If the BMX races are a big enough deal, that there's a report present, how come there's no crowd whatsoever?

Why doesn't the prison have more than one guard? The invisible snipers don't count.

At times this film feels more like some sort of low-budget porn without the porny bits. That might explain the terrible acting, story which jumps from scene to scene without any flow, the dialogue which seems to have been generated from a list of cliches and the occasional close-up of a busty woman zipping up her tits for no apparent reason.

The pacing is also way, way off - way too much nothing happens in between bits that matter and the crucial showdown is so tacked-on it isn't even funny. Did we really need so many scenes of Chase looking moody and staring into the distance?

To sum up: Asphalt Angels is dull and has nothing whatsoever to recommend it. Avoid.

Saturday, 29 December 2018

Disclaimer: If you are looking for tips on how to make your plastic models look better then oh boy, are you in the wrong place. If you want to see what happens when a man with no fine motor control tries to build a model kit then read on. Serious modelmakers may want to have a few stiff drinks before continuing because I'm about to upset you.

After building yet another Spitfire I promised myself that the next thing I made would be a bit more exotic. So on my next visit to Waterlooville Models (which isn't in Waterlooville. Don't ask) I was scanning the shelves for something that was within my budget and limited skills when I saw the box above and immediately thought "Yep. That'll do me."

Now at this point even the aircraft buffs are thinking "How come I've never heard of the MB6? Also, who thought "Night Ferret" was a good name for a fighter?" so some explanation is required.

Martin-Baker came up with a couple of interesting fighter designs during the war, culminating in the 1943 MB5

The MB5 was a promising design, being fast, well-armed and possessing a decent range but by the time it was ready to fly in late 1944 there was no real need for it any more. The RAF already had an armada of Spitfires and Tempests which could handle what was left of the Luftwaffe and it had been decided that the next generation of fighters would be jet-powered. The MB5 is therefore a classic example of a "What-if" aircraft.

The MB6 is a hypothetical 2-seater development of this design. So a what-if version of a plane that was already what-if to begin with.

Seems reasonable to me. Lord knows there's loads of kits of speculative Nazi Wunderwaffe on the shelves so why can't we have an RAF equivalent?

Digressing for a moment, although I do find it fascinating to see what weird and wonderful jets could have served with the Luftwaffe, is anybody else a bit disturbed by the enthusiasm certain people show for them. "If the war had gone on a bit longer then the Germans would have had all these cool jets and stuff and that would have been awesome."

To which my reply would be

A. They would still have lost and B. You realise you're basically cheering for the Nazis right? What's wrong with you?

Moving on.

Opening up the box I was immediately struck by one small detail.

Why have I got two fuselages? No idea. But this does mean that at some point I'm going to have a go at kit-bashing. All I need is some wings.

I was also quite glad to see that the contra-rotating props came in a nice, easy format. Gluing individual prop blades in place is a right sod and I'm convinced that half my Spitfires have the propeller-blades on backwards.

As we shall see, this is the last time I could use the word "Easy" in regard to the MB6.

In this little cockpit section there are 11 different parts. All of them very tiny. I've built entire kits that have maybe 20 parts full stop.
Remember also that this is a two-seater.

Yes, I know it looks like crap. Read the disclaimer again.

There's something else that didn't help. In the Airfix kits I'm used to there's all these helpful little tabs, slots and pegs to show you where all the bits should be. AZ Models clearly think this is cheating so they don't do any of that. I also had some issues with the instructions being a bit ambiguous as to how things fit together. I had to jiggle the rear cockpit around a bit before I found a configuration that seemed to work.

Next stage was to glue the fuselage together

I didn't get it quite right so I deployed just a little putty to smooth things out a bit.

There's more on the underside.

Oh dear. That's not pretty.

What you can't see - the inserts for the wheel wells.

That's because I gave up trying to fit the sodding things and threw them out the window.

Nobody is ever going to look in there anyway.

More putty. More sanding and fitting the undercarriage, which was surprisingly easy.

I had to improvise a jig to keep the MB6 in position while the glue dried.

The props are now on, the guns are in place after a lot of fiddling and some swearing and I've painted the whole thing black because I'm lazy. I don't have any Night-Fighters in my collection so this is really going to stand out.

Hmm. Wonder where the radar on this thing is? I'm assuming the wingtip pods.

For some reason a lot of kits nowadays don't give you a radio aerial so I had to improvise using one of the struts that was supposed to go into the undercarriage. When I lost tiny Undercarriage Strut #1 under the fridge I had to raid my spares box for something more or less the right size.

Fuck it. Nobody is going to look that closely anyway.

My whole modelmaking philosophy summed up right there, folks.

I deliberately left the canopy and the exhaust stubs until after I'd applied paint so now let's see what the Night Ferret looks like once I glue those in place and add the decals.

I wasn't overkeen on the decals as they seemed a bit fragile. I'm also not entirely sure a Night Fighter would have nice big white bits on the markings but this is a hypothetical aircraft so once again, fuck it.

So there you go, another model for my growing collection. The MB6 is a striking design which looks really cool in Nightfighter colours and I reckon I can feel pleased with myself.

I'm not great at making models and this sure as hell does not stand up to close inspection but I really don't care. I could make myself upset about the talent I don't have - or I could run with it, do the best I can and have fun.

Now what am I going to do next? I fancy doing some sort of jet...maybe something a bit unusual.

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About Me

I'm a nondescript sort of chap who likes a lot of stuff I really should have grown out of.
I'm also a bona fide nutter magnet and inanimate objects hate me.
I grew up reading the British comics of the 1970s (Victor, Battle, Warlord, 2000ad, Commando et al) and all things considered it's amazing my generation didn't grow up to be more violent. Later I picked up a taste for Marvel/DC and manga.
I've been listening to Heavy Metal since about 1988 and post-"Nevermind" spent most of the 90s sulking. I've also been interested in anime/manga since about 1994. I briefly helped run a convention until the rest of the organisers realised that I was actually crap at it.
I left school vowing that the only way anybody would ever be getting me back on a playing field was at gunpoint and remain baffled by most sports and most sports fans.
I also like happy dogs, unhealthy food, browsing Youtube looking for music videos and people hurting themselves in amusing ways, reading and MLP:FIM.
No, I don't know how that happened either.